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Information Commoner
October 2009
Volume 4, Issue 4
Keeping Library Staff on Common Ground
In This Issue
What’s Our Policy 2
Announcements 2
Department News 3
Ask the Tech Guy 7
Employee Spotlight 8
Mike’s Message
I would like to sing the praises of our new President, Dr.
Holland. He seems to have all the right instincts about the
role of the Library within the university. For example, he
could see immediately that the Library was not the place
for a meditation space. Secondly, he really understands
the level of collecting that we need to do. Lastly, he
initiated working with Catherine to begin placing
university records in archives. Being a professor and a
scholar in his own right bodes well for his support of the
Library in the future.
The university will be receiving a full accreditation visit
from Northwest in fall, 2010. The first draft of our part is
due December 4. This visit is automatically triggered two years after a school
changes status. I will be calling on all parts of the Library to help me with data
gathering to prepare to write our part of the self-study. So, thank you in advance for
all your help.
At Your Service
Make Mom Proud!
By Lesli Baker
I read a great thought the other day about customer service:
If you were raised with basic good manners and along the way ever joined a
service group, like the scouts or 4-H, then you've got the groundwork for
providing great customer service. The foundation you need is one of
courtesy, caring, willingness to serve, and an attitude that lets your
customers know that you they matter-and that you care...Great customer
service has its basis in good manners. See? Mom was right. (http://
money.howstuffworks.com/customer-service1.htm)
So, make your mom proud by showing off your good manners!
President Matthew
Holland, PhD
2 INFORMATION COMMONER
What’s Our Policy
By Lesli Baker
Students visiting the Library with small children have
priority for the computers in the Family Study Room.
Please ask students who do not have children with
them to move to a different computer in the Info
Commons if an open computer isn't available for a
student with family in tow. As an extra customer
service step, help the student you asked to leave
find an open computer.
Also, students may use the computers if no
computers in the Info Commons are open and there
are no families using the computers in the Family
Study Room.
Announcements: November Events
Costume Contest
Join our costume contest on Friday, October 30. The
Events Committee will select the top five costumes
and everyone will be able to vote for the best cos-tume
on our Facebook page between November 2
and November 6.
Food For Fines
The Library will begin its Food for Fines program
next month. Students will be able to reduce their
Library fines by bringing in donations of food starting
the week of Thanksgiving.
Save the Date
The Library Christmas party will be on December 18,
from 11:30 to 1:00. We will also sponsor a Sub For
Santa family. Keep an eye out for more details!
Sub For Santa is a charitable program sponsored by
the United Way where participants can donate food,
clothing, and toys to families in need. More informa-tion
about the program can be found on the United
Way website: www.unitedwayuc.org/subforsanta/.
ED I TO R I A L IN FORMA T I ON
The Information Commoner is an internal
communication tool published once a month by and for
the Utah Valley University Library staff. Input from all
library staff is encouraged.
The deadline for information submittal is the third
Friday of each month. Send information to Lesli via
email.
News from Access Services News from Serials
INFORMATION COMMONER 3
By J O’Day and Holly Larson
Roving Aides are Library Aides specifically trained to
offer service to Library patrons on the third and fourth
floors of the library. During the busiest hours of the
Library, Roving Aides will actively look for patrons who
need help finding materials throughout the Library and
help to enforce the Library’s “Quiet Up” Policy.
To help in this effort the Roving Aides wear yellow “Ask
Me” vests so that they can be easily recognized. We
hope that this new function will help us increase our
visible presence in the Library as well as help our patrons
to more easily access the materials they might need.
By Wendy Wise
Ben Killgore is currently shifting the bound periodical
collection. Every item is still shelved in correct order but
there may be some confusion by patrons about where to
locate specific items because the signs on the sides of
the shelves are no longer accurate. Keep this in mind if
they approach you with quizzical looks or chagrin when
they inquire regarding an items whereabouts.
As we approach the end of the year, more 2009 issues
will be found on the compact shelves and not in the
current periodical collection. Please check both areas for
2009 issues.
By Mark Stevens
Symphony OPAC Adjustments
SirsiDynix will continue to provide monthly support calls
for four more months to aid our efforts to the improve
the appearance and functions of our library OPAC.
Please seek a consensus of your peers for any desired
changes or improvements and then communicate them
to Azucena Aguayo, Mark Stevens, or Annie Smith.
New eRES Server Implementation Status
The hardware for the new eRES server has arrived, and is
currently being installed in the data center. We are
awaiting a response from SirsiDynix regarding a schedule
date for transferring all the data from the old server to
the new server. We expect that the new release of the
eRES software (and the newer, more powerful server)
will provide streamed video and other exciting
capabilities for both patrons and our eRES management
staff.
News from Systems
4 INFORMATION COMMONER
By Christy Donaldson
Heather and I attended the National Media Market
from Sunday, October 4th through Friday, October
9th. It started out with us just making the last bit of
a large group discussion on the environment of
media rights today and the intersections and
implications for buyers and providers of media.
Monday was the Market Mania showcase in which
the participating exhibitors give seven-minute
presentations on the newest and greatest releases
from the past year. This lasts all day long followed
by a professional development session on providing
captions (for students with a hearing loss) and
descriptions (for students with a vision loss) as a
means of supporting the needs of ten million deaf
and/or blind students across campuses nationwide.
Tuesday started out with a professional
development session on community engagement
success stories presented in part by Laura Hunter
from our own UEN (Utah Education Network). The
rest of the day was devoted to screening films.
How this works is there are exhibitors from 55
vendors that have suites set up with three to five
stations for viewing films. Each exhibitor has
brought with them their latest educational and
independent films for the media buyers like us to
take a look at. With 55 vendors and hundreds of
films to see daily, we had to flip through films to get
an idea of the content and quality of the film and
then make notes about what we saw. From there
we would determine whether the film fits into our
collection and whether (on a sliding scale) it would
be worth adding to our collection. Eight hours on
Tuesday were devoted to screening films, another
seven hours on Wednesday, and finally three hours
on Thursday and we still didn’t get to see
everything! It’s always a challenge but we did
manage to make it to the vendors who had the
most interesting and applicable films for our
collection. You should start seeing these new films
showing up in the media collection over the span of
the next several months.
One highlight from the show was a film called Rip: A
Remix Manifesto which won the Best-in-Show
award this year. It was produced by the
Disinformation Company and is now being
distributed by the National Film Board of Canada.
You can see clips from the film on their website
(www.nfb.ca/film/rip_a_remix_manifesto_1). The
film is about remixing music and copyright law and
whether or not it is legal to mash-up media as a
part of new work of art or in infringement on the
current laws protecting music. It explores issues of
copyright in the information age and the wall that is
breaking down between users and producers of
media. It is a fabulous film that we’ll own a copy of
in the near future.
No news reported.
News from Media
Rip: A Remix Manifesto
News from Technical
Services
INFORMATION COMMONER 5
News from Reference/Instruction
By Annie Smith
Things at the Reference Desk have not slowed down at
all this semester. The Info Commons has been hitting
capacity nearly every day since September. And since
the Commons hasn’t slowed down at all between the
beginning of the semester and midterms, it’s unlikely
that it will slow down until after finals and students start
to head home for the holidays. Carlos has regularly had
to open the classrooms on the second floor to handle
the excess (when the schedule permits).
We’re not just seeing increases in the number of
computers used. We’re also seeing an increase in the
number of reference questions. Since we don’t keep
track of the number of in-person questions, these
statistics are pulled from LiveHelp:
2008 2009 Increase
September 56 79 41%
October 58 86 48%
Instruction has (we think) increased. We won’t know for
sure until we get the final numbers in December
whether or not we taught more classes and workshops
this fall than during last fall. But I think our schedules
would concur!
Reference Tip
Did you know that you can search for books in many of
Utah’s biggest public libraries at once, rather than
finding their catalogs online and searching them
separately? The link to Utah’s Multi Catalog Search is
available on our Books page (www.uvu.edu/library/
researchtools/books.html); it’s listed as All Utah Public
Libraries.
On the Multi Catalog Search page you can select the
libraries you’d like to have searched, then enter a title,
an author, or a keyword.
The search takes a few seconds to run. But when it’s
finished, you will see your results for each of the library
catalogs you searched. Clicking on the titles takes you to
the relevant record in the native catalog so that you can
see if the book is available.
This is not a very sophisticated search. (Searching for
Twilight brought up dozens of titles, but not the book I
was actually looking for). Providing as many details as
you can does help.
By Catherine McIntyre
October has been a very busy month in Archives
and Digitization!
First, I want to welcome Brent Seavers, who started
mid-September as the new Archives and
Digitization Assistant. He has tremendous skills in
digitization, audio and visual wizardry, web design,
poster and brochure design--and that’s just what
he’s done in the last three weeks! He’s a great
person and a good sport. If you haven’t met him
yet, come by Archives in the afternoons or anytime
Fridays and say hey!
Archives: October is Archives Month in Utah, and
so I put together a display in the First Floor display
shelves about the history of UVU and the influence
of the late Wilson W. Sorensen. Brent created a
terrific poster to help publicize it. It ran from
October 13 to October 23.
I was asked by Kyle Reyes, Assistant to the
President, to do some research using the Archives
to use in President Holland’s inauguration speech.
He wanted some information and quotes about or
by Hiram Johnson, first president of the Central
Utah Vocational School from 1941-1946, that
emphasized how much hard work he had done to
start the school and keep it going despite many
political and financial odds. I was able to find
several quotes, including one from then Governor
Herbert Maw, about how the school would not
have survived if not for Johnson. He didn’t use the
exact quote in his speech, but alluded to Johnson’s
dedication and hard work. Oh well, at least the
Archives contributed something to it, however
indirectly!
Scholars’ Open Archive: I attended “IR Day” at
Utah State University and learned how various
universities are using institutional repositories,
what systems they are using, and about the
successes and challenges they are experiencing as
they work to provide the means for faculty and
staff to post and share scholarly research and
projects. We have chosen to use SelectedWorks, by
Berkeley Electronic Press, as the platform for what
we’re calling the Scholars’ Open Archive. The
benefits of this system include the fact that faculty
and staff can create, manage, and customize their
own site, and add scholarly content whenever they
want. They can easily notify others of their new
scholarship, and also get usage statistics of how
many times their works get downloaded. Further,
works are searchable within the site and on Google.
I’ve been contacting faculty, sending out UV
Announce and Academic Communicator
announcements about it, giving workshops, and
printing up handouts to start getting the word out.
Take a look and see who has added content so far
(http://works.bepress.com/uvu/).
Oral History: I attended the annual Oral History
Association meeting in Louisville, Kentucky, Oct. 13-
18. I was a co-presenter with Dr. Kathy French and
student JoEllen Perez as we reported on the “Oral
History of Utah Peace Activists” project that we’ve
been involved with for the past three years, and
which continues to grow today. We had a great
time, and I attended some wonderful sessions that
have given me ideas of ways to improve our own
collections and the access to them. Brent, Annie
and I put together a website to showcase ten of the
interviewees in time for the conference. There will
eventually be around 150. You can access
transcripts and even clips of the interviews. This
site will grow and change as we add more
Continued on next page.
News From the Sutherland Archives
6 INFORMATION COMMONER
Continued from previous page.
interviewees, but it’s a great start! (www.uvu.edu/
library/archives/peace.html).
Also, we hosted an “Introduction to Oral History”
workshop on Thursday, Oct. 29, from 9-1 p.m. in LI 502.
Kent Powell from the Utah State Historical Society
presented the program.
And finally, I will be working with Kathy French, Linda
Shelton, and the director of the UVU Capitol Reef Field
Station, Hau Truong, to start planning an oral history
project that revolves around the people who live in the
vicinity of the Field Station. We are holding a planning
meeting Friday October 30 at the Field Station, so I guess
I’ll have to go to Capitol Reef. Rough job.
Digitization: The Mountain West Digital Library
(www.mwdl.org) and the UALC Digitization Committee
staffed a booth at the Utah Education Association
conference earlier this month. I took a turn for two
hours and was pleased to see the interest among
educators in using digitized primary sources in the
classroom. We were next to the Western Soundscape
Archives booth, which is a MWDL project (http://
westernsoundscape.org) which offers amazing recorded
sounds and images of birds, insects, mammals, and
ambient outdoor sounds.
Brent has been doing a great job getting through some
of the digitization backlog, among countless other
things. He’s also gotten the giant cradle scanner put
together and will soon start scanning several fragile
books and scrapbooks that we have.
We are going to be upgrading CONTENTdm soon,
moving our digital collections from version 4.3 to 5.1,
and adding everything thereafter using 5.1. That will be
a challenge. So, if I seem extra grumpy in the next week
or two, you’ll know why! After that is finished, we’ll start
working with Orem Public Library to train them to add
their digital content to our server. But we all have to be
using the same version first.
INFORMATION COMMONER 7
ASK THE TE CH GU Y
Q: A student wants to transfer a video from a
camcorder to the computer. Is that possible?
A: Yes. Ask the student if they have a USB cable that
can connect the camcorder to the computer. If they
do, all you have to do is show them where the plug
goes.
If they don’t have a cable they can use the cable
that’s plugged into the DV deck (the smaller of the
two machines on the Media computers) to hook up
their camcorders directly to the computer.
For more details about which plug goes where, ask
Carlos.
A DV Deck
INFORMATION COMMONER 8
Background information: I grew up in Sacramento, CA
and moved to Spanish Fork, Utah three years ago where
I currently live with my wife Marie, our daughter Jane
(four years old) and son Ethan (two years old).
When did you start working at UVU? What changes
have you seen? I only started working at UVU at the end
of September, so the most drastic changes I’ve seen are
concerning dropping stocks and temperatures.
Favorite things about job/UVU: I actually really enjoy
my job. It’s creative and constantly changing. Finding out
that UVU also paid for schooling was a keen added
bonus.
Job duties: Other than obviously fighting ninjas (which
everyone expects from an Archives Assistant), I mostly
scan old photos and documents, digitize old audio
interviews, and help design various promotional
material.
Education: I started school at the University of California
Davis and Sacramento State (both in California) but
ended up here at UVU where I’m currently working
towards my degree in Digital Media.
Favorite things to do in your spare time or hobbies: It’s
often difficult to find spare time since I am both a full-time
UVU student and full-time employee. But I’m into
all sorts of art, music, film and pretty much anything that
could be labeled “creative.” Although lately I’ve been
spending more time playing “Beatles Rock Band” rather
than really playing rock and roll. I also dig taking long
motorcycle road trips and exploring new places.
Employee Spotlight: Brent Seavers

Information Commoner
October 2009
Volume 4, Issue 4
Keeping Library Staff on Common Ground
In This Issue
What’s Our Policy 2
Announcements 2
Department News 3
Ask the Tech Guy 7
Employee Spotlight 8
Mike’s Message
I would like to sing the praises of our new President, Dr.
Holland. He seems to have all the right instincts about the
role of the Library within the university. For example, he
could see immediately that the Library was not the place
for a meditation space. Secondly, he really understands
the level of collecting that we need to do. Lastly, he
initiated working with Catherine to begin placing
university records in archives. Being a professor and a
scholar in his own right bodes well for his support of the
Library in the future.
The university will be receiving a full accreditation visit
from Northwest in fall, 2010. The first draft of our part is
due December 4. This visit is automatically triggered two years after a school
changes status. I will be calling on all parts of the Library to help me with data
gathering to prepare to write our part of the self-study. So, thank you in advance for
all your help.
At Your Service
Make Mom Proud!
By Lesli Baker
I read a great thought the other day about customer service:
If you were raised with basic good manners and along the way ever joined a
service group, like the scouts or 4-H, then you've got the groundwork for
providing great customer service. The foundation you need is one of
courtesy, caring, willingness to serve, and an attitude that lets your
customers know that you they matter-and that you care...Great customer
service has its basis in good manners. See? Mom was right. (http://
money.howstuffworks.com/customer-service1.htm)
So, make your mom proud by showing off your good manners!
President Matthew
Holland, PhD
2 INFORMATION COMMONER
What’s Our Policy
By Lesli Baker
Students visiting the Library with small children have
priority for the computers in the Family Study Room.
Please ask students who do not have children with
them to move to a different computer in the Info
Commons if an open computer isn't available for a
student with family in tow. As an extra customer
service step, help the student you asked to leave
find an open computer.
Also, students may use the computers if no
computers in the Info Commons are open and there
are no families using the computers in the Family
Study Room.
Announcements: November Events
Costume Contest
Join our costume contest on Friday, October 30. The
Events Committee will select the top five costumes
and everyone will be able to vote for the best cos-tume
on our Facebook page between November 2
and November 6.
Food For Fines
The Library will begin its Food for Fines program
next month. Students will be able to reduce their
Library fines by bringing in donations of food starting
the week of Thanksgiving.
Save the Date
The Library Christmas party will be on December 18,
from 11:30 to 1:00. We will also sponsor a Sub For
Santa family. Keep an eye out for more details!
Sub For Santa is a charitable program sponsored by
the United Way where participants can donate food,
clothing, and toys to families in need. More informa-tion
about the program can be found on the United
Way website: www.unitedwayuc.org/subforsanta/.
ED I TO R I A L IN FORMA T I ON
The Information Commoner is an internal
communication tool published once a month by and for
the Utah Valley University Library staff. Input from all
library staff is encouraged.
The deadline for information submittal is the third
Friday of each month. Send information to Lesli via
email.
News from Access Services News from Serials
INFORMATION COMMONER 3
By J O’Day and Holly Larson
Roving Aides are Library Aides specifically trained to
offer service to Library patrons on the third and fourth
floors of the library. During the busiest hours of the
Library, Roving Aides will actively look for patrons who
need help finding materials throughout the Library and
help to enforce the Library’s “Quiet Up” Policy.
To help in this effort the Roving Aides wear yellow “Ask
Me” vests so that they can be easily recognized. We
hope that this new function will help us increase our
visible presence in the Library as well as help our patrons
to more easily access the materials they might need.
By Wendy Wise
Ben Killgore is currently shifting the bound periodical
collection. Every item is still shelved in correct order but
there may be some confusion by patrons about where to
locate specific items because the signs on the sides of
the shelves are no longer accurate. Keep this in mind if
they approach you with quizzical looks or chagrin when
they inquire regarding an items whereabouts.
As we approach the end of the year, more 2009 issues
will be found on the compact shelves and not in the
current periodical collection. Please check both areas for
2009 issues.
By Mark Stevens
Symphony OPAC Adjustments
SirsiDynix will continue to provide monthly support calls
for four more months to aid our efforts to the improve
the appearance and functions of our library OPAC.
Please seek a consensus of your peers for any desired
changes or improvements and then communicate them
to Azucena Aguayo, Mark Stevens, or Annie Smith.
New eRES Server Implementation Status
The hardware for the new eRES server has arrived, and is
currently being installed in the data center. We are
awaiting a response from SirsiDynix regarding a schedule
date for transferring all the data from the old server to
the new server. We expect that the new release of the
eRES software (and the newer, more powerful server)
will provide streamed video and other exciting
capabilities for both patrons and our eRES management
staff.
News from Systems
4 INFORMATION COMMONER
By Christy Donaldson
Heather and I attended the National Media Market
from Sunday, October 4th through Friday, October
9th. It started out with us just making the last bit of
a large group discussion on the environment of
media rights today and the intersections and
implications for buyers and providers of media.
Monday was the Market Mania showcase in which
the participating exhibitors give seven-minute
presentations on the newest and greatest releases
from the past year. This lasts all day long followed
by a professional development session on providing
captions (for students with a hearing loss) and
descriptions (for students with a vision loss) as a
means of supporting the needs of ten million deaf
and/or blind students across campuses nationwide.
Tuesday started out with a professional
development session on community engagement
success stories presented in part by Laura Hunter
from our own UEN (Utah Education Network). The
rest of the day was devoted to screening films.
How this works is there are exhibitors from 55
vendors that have suites set up with three to five
stations for viewing films. Each exhibitor has
brought with them their latest educational and
independent films for the media buyers like us to
take a look at. With 55 vendors and hundreds of
films to see daily, we had to flip through films to get
an idea of the content and quality of the film and
then make notes about what we saw. From there
we would determine whether the film fits into our
collection and whether (on a sliding scale) it would
be worth adding to our collection. Eight hours on
Tuesday were devoted to screening films, another
seven hours on Wednesday, and finally three hours
on Thursday and we still didn’t get to see
everything! It’s always a challenge but we did
manage to make it to the vendors who had the
most interesting and applicable films for our
collection. You should start seeing these new films
showing up in the media collection over the span of
the next several months.
One highlight from the show was a film called Rip: A
Remix Manifesto which won the Best-in-Show
award this year. It was produced by the
Disinformation Company and is now being
distributed by the National Film Board of Canada.
You can see clips from the film on their website
(www.nfb.ca/film/rip_a_remix_manifesto_1). The
film is about remixing music and copyright law and
whether or not it is legal to mash-up media as a
part of new work of art or in infringement on the
current laws protecting music. It explores issues of
copyright in the information age and the wall that is
breaking down between users and producers of
media. It is a fabulous film that we’ll own a copy of
in the near future.
No news reported.
News from Media
Rip: A Remix Manifesto
News from Technical
Services
INFORMATION COMMONER 5
News from Reference/Instruction
By Annie Smith
Things at the Reference Desk have not slowed down at
all this semester. The Info Commons has been hitting
capacity nearly every day since September. And since
the Commons hasn’t slowed down at all between the
beginning of the semester and midterms, it’s unlikely
that it will slow down until after finals and students start
to head home for the holidays. Carlos has regularly had
to open the classrooms on the second floor to handle
the excess (when the schedule permits).
We’re not just seeing increases in the number of
computers used. We’re also seeing an increase in the
number of reference questions. Since we don’t keep
track of the number of in-person questions, these
statistics are pulled from LiveHelp:
2008 2009 Increase
September 56 79 41%
October 58 86 48%
Instruction has (we think) increased. We won’t know for
sure until we get the final numbers in December
whether or not we taught more classes and workshops
this fall than during last fall. But I think our schedules
would concur!
Reference Tip
Did you know that you can search for books in many of
Utah’s biggest public libraries at once, rather than
finding their catalogs online and searching them
separately? The link to Utah’s Multi Catalog Search is
available on our Books page (www.uvu.edu/library/
researchtools/books.html); it’s listed as All Utah Public
Libraries.
On the Multi Catalog Search page you can select the
libraries you’d like to have searched, then enter a title,
an author, or a keyword.
The search takes a few seconds to run. But when it’s
finished, you will see your results for each of the library
catalogs you searched. Clicking on the titles takes you to
the relevant record in the native catalog so that you can
see if the book is available.
This is not a very sophisticated search. (Searching for
Twilight brought up dozens of titles, but not the book I
was actually looking for). Providing as many details as
you can does help.
By Catherine McIntyre
October has been a very busy month in Archives
and Digitization!
First, I want to welcome Brent Seavers, who started
mid-September as the new Archives and
Digitization Assistant. He has tremendous skills in
digitization, audio and visual wizardry, web design,
poster and brochure design--and that’s just what
he’s done in the last three weeks! He’s a great
person and a good sport. If you haven’t met him
yet, come by Archives in the afternoons or anytime
Fridays and say hey!
Archives: October is Archives Month in Utah, and
so I put together a display in the First Floor display
shelves about the history of UVU and the influence
of the late Wilson W. Sorensen. Brent created a
terrific poster to help publicize it. It ran from
October 13 to October 23.
I was asked by Kyle Reyes, Assistant to the
President, to do some research using the Archives
to use in President Holland’s inauguration speech.
He wanted some information and quotes about or
by Hiram Johnson, first president of the Central
Utah Vocational School from 1941-1946, that
emphasized how much hard work he had done to
start the school and keep it going despite many
political and financial odds. I was able to find
several quotes, including one from then Governor
Herbert Maw, about how the school would not
have survived if not for Johnson. He didn’t use the
exact quote in his speech, but alluded to Johnson’s
dedication and hard work. Oh well, at least the
Archives contributed something to it, however
indirectly!
Scholars’ Open Archive: I attended “IR Day” at
Utah State University and learned how various
universities are using institutional repositories,
what systems they are using, and about the
successes and challenges they are experiencing as
they work to provide the means for faculty and
staff to post and share scholarly research and
projects. We have chosen to use SelectedWorks, by
Berkeley Electronic Press, as the platform for what
we’re calling the Scholars’ Open Archive. The
benefits of this system include the fact that faculty
and staff can create, manage, and customize their
own site, and add scholarly content whenever they
want. They can easily notify others of their new
scholarship, and also get usage statistics of how
many times their works get downloaded. Further,
works are searchable within the site and on Google.
I’ve been contacting faculty, sending out UV
Announce and Academic Communicator
announcements about it, giving workshops, and
printing up handouts to start getting the word out.
Take a look and see who has added content so far
(http://works.bepress.com/uvu/).
Oral History: I attended the annual Oral History
Association meeting in Louisville, Kentucky, Oct. 13-
18. I was a co-presenter with Dr. Kathy French and
student JoEllen Perez as we reported on the “Oral
History of Utah Peace Activists” project that we’ve
been involved with for the past three years, and
which continues to grow today. We had a great
time, and I attended some wonderful sessions that
have given me ideas of ways to improve our own
collections and the access to them. Brent, Annie
and I put together a website to showcase ten of the
interviewees in time for the conference. There will
eventually be around 150. You can access
transcripts and even clips of the interviews. This
site will grow and change as we add more
Continued on next page.
News From the Sutherland Archives
6 INFORMATION COMMONER
Continued from previous page.
interviewees, but it’s a great start! (www.uvu.edu/
library/archives/peace.html).
Also, we hosted an “Introduction to Oral History”
workshop on Thursday, Oct. 29, from 9-1 p.m. in LI 502.
Kent Powell from the Utah State Historical Society
presented the program.
And finally, I will be working with Kathy French, Linda
Shelton, and the director of the UVU Capitol Reef Field
Station, Hau Truong, to start planning an oral history
project that revolves around the people who live in the
vicinity of the Field Station. We are holding a planning
meeting Friday October 30 at the Field Station, so I guess
I’ll have to go to Capitol Reef. Rough job.
Digitization: The Mountain West Digital Library
(www.mwdl.org) and the UALC Digitization Committee
staffed a booth at the Utah Education Association
conference earlier this month. I took a turn for two
hours and was pleased to see the interest among
educators in using digitized primary sources in the
classroom. We were next to the Western Soundscape
Archives booth, which is a MWDL project (http://
westernsoundscape.org) which offers amazing recorded
sounds and images of birds, insects, mammals, and
ambient outdoor sounds.
Brent has been doing a great job getting through some
of the digitization backlog, among countless other
things. He’s also gotten the giant cradle scanner put
together and will soon start scanning several fragile
books and scrapbooks that we have.
We are going to be upgrading CONTENTdm soon,
moving our digital collections from version 4.3 to 5.1,
and adding everything thereafter using 5.1. That will be
a challenge. So, if I seem extra grumpy in the next week
or two, you’ll know why! After that is finished, we’ll start
working with Orem Public Library to train them to add
their digital content to our server. But we all have to be
using the same version first.
INFORMATION COMMONER 7
ASK THE TE CH GU Y
Q: A student wants to transfer a video from a
camcorder to the computer. Is that possible?
A: Yes. Ask the student if they have a USB cable that
can connect the camcorder to the computer. If they
do, all you have to do is show them where the plug
goes.
If they don’t have a cable they can use the cable
that’s plugged into the DV deck (the smaller of the
two machines on the Media computers) to hook up
their camcorders directly to the computer.
For more details about which plug goes where, ask
Carlos.
A DV Deck
INFORMATION COMMONER 8
Background information: I grew up in Sacramento, CA
and moved to Spanish Fork, Utah three years ago where
I currently live with my wife Marie, our daughter Jane
(four years old) and son Ethan (two years old).
When did you start working at UVU? What changes
have you seen? I only started working at UVU at the end
of September, so the most drastic changes I’ve seen are
concerning dropping stocks and temperatures.
Favorite things about job/UVU: I actually really enjoy
my job. It’s creative and constantly changing. Finding out
that UVU also paid for schooling was a keen added
bonus.
Job duties: Other than obviously fighting ninjas (which
everyone expects from an Archives Assistant), I mostly
scan old photos and documents, digitize old audio
interviews, and help design various promotional
material.
Education: I started school at the University of California
Davis and Sacramento State (both in California) but
ended up here at UVU where I’m currently working
towards my degree in Digital Media.
Favorite things to do in your spare time or hobbies: It’s
often difficult to find spare time since I am both a full-time
UVU student and full-time employee. But I’m into
all sorts of art, music, film and pretty much anything that
could be labeled “creative.” Although lately I’ve been
spending more time playing “Beatles Rock Band” rather
than really playing rock and roll. I also dig taking long
motorcycle road trips and exploring new places.
Employee Spotlight: Brent Seavers